George Houser
(1916  2015)

Rev. George Houser, a Methodist minister and veteran civil rights activist
died August 19, at age 99. In 1947 he was one of the organizers of the Journey
of Reconciliation in which black and white activists rode interstate buses in
Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee to test compliance with the
Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation of interstate passengers
unconstitutional....

This protest was the model for the better known Freedom Rides of 1961. In 1940
Houser, then a student at Union Theological Seminary, refused to register for
the draft and was sentenced to prison. After his release Houser, together with
James Farmer and Bayard Rustin formed the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)
which initiated direct action campaigns against segregation, first in the
North, and later in the South.

In the 1950s Houser began organizing American opposition to South Africa's
apartheid regime, serving as the first executive secretary of the American
Committee on Africa.